It's beta time!
To be fair, if you're testing Apple iOS, beta season never ends. For many years, the company has kept a regular beta schedule. However, if you've been testing iOS 15, you might have grown a little tired of it. Late-stage betas are infamously boring, primarily concentrating on bug fixes and getting ready for iOS 16, which is the actual star of the show.
And there is much to be enthusiastic about! This is what excites me the most about the most recent Cupertino product so far; I've been using the developer beta for about a month now.
1. Personalized Lock screens
When you launch iOS 16 Public Beta 1, this is the first thing you'll notice and probably the first thing you'll tweak. Although we have always had the option to alter our background, customised lock screens with widgets and various fonts are a completely new concept.
To access the gallery and create new screens, long touch the lock screen. The option to automatically rearrange selected photographs is available in the first public beta (unlike earlier developer betas). It's a lot of fun, particularly if you have a sizable image library. I will admit that the People selection requires improvement. The settings currently don't display all of the persons that have been identified in your photo bank, and even when they do, they tend to pick pretty awful images. Automatic photo selection appears to work better for Places, Pets, and Cities.
Once you've chosen a picture, you can modify the typeface and add widgets (now, they're all for Apple apps, but I expect that will change in the future). Even a lock screen can be assigned to a certain Focus.
2. Editing Messages
I'm thrilled about this. Typos might be funny, but more often than not they merely lead to extra work as you try to clarify what you meant to say. With iOS 16, you can long-press a message you've just sent to make changes or to completely unsend it. Finally, you won't need to quickly send starred messages after sending a mistaken message.
There are a few restrictions, though. Your updated messages won't be visible to anyone who isn't also using the iOS 16 beta. Everyone else will receive a new copy of the document with your edits. Additionally, this is limited to recently delivered messages. For around 20 minutes, messages can be edited and not sent. They are then confined inside.
3. Pictures
A shared library that automatically selects photographs shot when members of the library are present is one of the many new features that Photos offers. As amazing as it sounds, it isn't particularly helpful just yet because it requires everyone to be using the iOS 16 beta.
The new selective cut and paste feature is more intriguing! Choose a picture featuring people, animals, or an object with a distinct foreground focus. You can select an area of the image by pressing it. You have the choice to copy or directly share the selection after Photos automatically determines its boundaries. The pick will have an animated outline around it when it is successful. If you're using Stage Manager on the iPad, you can also drag & drop it between apps. Although it doesn't work in every photo, it works more frequently than I had anticipated.
This function will be really useful, especially for creative people.
Bonus! Continuous-focus lens
You're in luck if you're also trying out the macOS Ventura beta. One of the most exciting new features in this year's series of software updates has been unlocked by you. Open any app that allows you to choose the camera for video conferences (such as Facetime, Zoom, etc.). Next, choose Continuity Camera. Your iPhone, which is running iOS 16, will now be the source of your video stream. If you don't have a high-resolution camera or just want to give them a tour of your home, it's quite useful. I've already used it in conference calls to display some artwork that viewers can see behind me but couldn't get a close-up of before.
These are all excellent reasons to update and experiment with iOS 16 at this time. But you should be sure you're willing to pay the admission fee before going to beta.apple.com and enrolling your device.
Here are four justifications for delaying your beta adoption.
CarPlay
Many of Apple's ideas for CarPlay in iOS 16 are still in the works. In fact, in the first phases of each iOS beta I've taken part in, CarPlay has continually been unreliable. You might want to wait for later releases if you rely on CarPlay for entertainment or navigation, particularly podcasts, as that is where the development is taking place.
Currently, CarPlay is basically functioning, but when you try to utilise applications like Maps (where many stops are being added to navigation routes), or Podcasts, it unfortunately has a propensity to freeze up or fail (that are eventually getting a new interface in a future beta release)If you need CarPlay to be stable, steer away from the beta until build 3 or 4.
Unsupported applications
Even though developers have had access to the iOS 16 beta for the past month, not all of your favourite apps have received upgrades to support it. Apps are likely to fail. applications that are essential for use. To help developers determine what needs to be changed before launch, beta testing includes reporting this kind of failure.
For instance, I continue to substitute Google's keyboard for the default Apple keyboard. Even though iOS 16 adds capacitive feedback to Apple's keyboard, Google's keyboard still performs better at accurately anticipating what I want to type. However, I've discovered that iOS 16 sporadically forbids me from using the keyboard. I can switch to it, but no input is accepted.
The problem is currently fixed by rebooting the computer, but you'll have to adjust to situations like these while beta testing. You are purposefully reducing the stability of your reliable, steady device.
.jpg)
Battery Life
Do you like that your iPhone's battery lasts an entire day? Avoid downloading iOS 16 Public Beta 1 then. First, iOS indexes your device whenever a new version is installed. For the first few days after a new setup, this might significantly deplete .
Second, iOS 16 isn't, at least not yet, battery life optimised. Apple will need to go through several iterations of beta testing until performance and battery utilisation are perfectly balanced. Additionally, iOS 16 is being created with future devices in mind. Even though you might own a top-of-the-line iPhone 13 Max, it won't be so for long .Apple is almost probably testing iOS 16 on the iPhone 14 hardware and using the as-yet-unannounced smartphones to test optimization methods.
Bonus? Mail
Even while this isn't a problem per per, Apple keeps bragging about how much Mail has improved with each new iOS version. It's true, too! The mail has changed! In iOS 16, you may plan emails, snooze them for later, and even reverse emails that have already been sent.
something you have previously been able to accomplish for years using outside mail programmes like Spark.
I test out Mail whenever a new version of iOS or macOS is released in the hopes that it would eventually meet the high standard set by third-party apps. Unfortunately, every year I'm let down. Mail is still a lifeless, uninspiring software with sporadic updates that are only catching up.
Additionally, the interaction UI changes depending on where the email is originating from and multiple inboxes are still hardly supported. It is quite annoying to continually guess whether to swipe in order to delete, archive, or snooze each email (if all those options are even available).
There are other iOS email apps that are superior, especially if you use numerous inboxes (like the aforementioned Spark which has a lovely unified UI).
0 Comments